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I know now that she wanted me to have the experience fully for myself. She must have known that in time I would replace the idea of being “perfect” with the idea of being “present” and bonding with my baby. After nine kids, my mother knew good and well that “babies aren’t all that fragile” and that he would be fine through all of my “rehearsals.”

One of the very few times I saw my mother weep in a fragile way was when her own mother passed away. I was a young teenager then and was in my room at home, suffering my own sadness at the loss of my grandmother. When my mother came in to check on me, she sat down on the edge of my bed to talk. I am certain she didn’t expect what happened next. Overcome by grief, she dropped her face into her hands and cried, “Now who will take care of me?”

I was frightened by her emotion; I had never known my mother to be anything but a stable force in our home. The only tears I had seen her cry before this were tears of joy or at least warmth at an uplifting story. Watching my mother weep from heartbreak was something I never forgot and only understood more deeply as my mother aged.

No, “babies aren’t all that fragile,” but new mothers are, middle-aged mothers can be at times, and, inevitably, old mothers become fragile. As I said, it doesn’t matter at what age a woman has her first child, the newness of the experience is still the same. I now know that the same is true in reverse. It doesn’t matter at what age a woman loses her mother—the loss of that first and most significant relationship is the same.

When my mother had her massive stroke in the fall of 2002, at age seventy-seven, she was airlifted from St. George, Utah, where she and my father were living, to a hospital in Provo, Utah, which had the specialized surgeons to deal with her bleeding aneurysm.

My brothers flew in from around the country to join me at my mother’s side as the medical team explained the risks
of performing surgery. She could have died on the operating table, and should she survive, her chances of full recovery were slim.

My brothers, father, and I came together in prayer. We asked for guidance for the surgeon, doctors, and nurses who would be attending our mother. Afterward, our father opened the Scriptures to a verse that gave us comfort, which said in essence to let God be God. We prayed for whatever God’s will would be in our lives and in our mother’s life.

After her surgery, I felt strongly that my mother’s will to live was in agreement with God’s will. I think she knew she had one more way to help us to grow in understanding and appreciate the cycle of life, and that was to show us the grace involved in departing this life.

My mother never did recover her ability to walk or even speak with her full voice. She was in a rehabilitation hospital for over a year, after which we relocated her to a new home that was much closer to her doctors. We had nurses come in to take care of everything medical, as she now needed a machine for oxygen and another for feeding, and various IV lines.

This coincided with the time in my own life when my last child, Abigail, was heading into the terrible twos, old enough for me to go back to work full-time, even if that meant travel. Broadway had beckoned to give me a lead in a musical. Hollywood was calling to see if I was interested in various shows. Concert promoters were asking if I planned to tour. I could have gone. Virl was at hand every day to help my parents, and Donny and his wife, Debbie, lived in Provo as well. My mother
would have told me to go on with my career, but my heart told me to stay.

I wanted to be near my mother. I needed to participate in her care, from the complicated duties of keeping track of medical information to the simplest care, like brushing her hair and rubbing lotion into her arms. I wanted to get her opinions on the new dolls I had designed for my next Marie Osmond series and take the time to paint a gorgeous border of climbing roses along the top of the walls of her room with the help of my lifelong friend Patty. My mother could no longer sit at a sewing machine, like she loved doing, so she watched as I made her pretty nightgowns and designed a new quilt. I wanted to comfort her and make her smile. I wanted my children to have that time to be with her. I wanted to be even closer to her so that I could hear her whispers of wisdom about all aspects of life: from keeping house, to keeping peace at home, to the peace she felt as she prepared to go back to her “heavenly home.”

One morning, after dropping my children off at school, I stopped in to see my mother. She seemed to be in pain from having to be turned onto her side for a treatment. She winced at the effort it took her to move her legs even a little. After it was over, I lay on the hospital bed next to her.

“Mommy, I know how hard this is for you,” I said, patting her arm. “I’m so sorry you’re suffering.”

She smiled and motioned for me to get her pencil and paper. I put the pencil in her hand and held the pad up. She struggled to write down six words. When I read them, tears fell from my eyes. She had written, “I love every breath I take.”

Over the next six months, I helped stand watch over her as she became more like an infant, completely dependent, unable to speak and sleeping for hours and hours on end.

In the months before she left us, there were two occasions when my brothers and I thought the hour was at hand. At those times, Virl would be there around the clock to support my father. My brothers would, once again, fly in from around the country, and we would gather, as a family, in her room. Once we were all together and talking and sharing our lives, she would somehow stabilize and continue on. My brothers and I would look at one another knowingly and laugh. Our mother just wanted to make certain that we all stayed close through this time.

At two a.m. one night, I sat alone in her room, trying to knit a scarf for my daughter. My heart was grieving that I would soon be a motherless child. However, my spirit was peaceful, knowing that I had answered my mother’s question of years and years before: “Who will take care of me?”

“I will, Mother,” I thought to myself. “I will and your beloved firstborn son, Virl, will and all of your other sons, too. In the same way you selflessly cared for us, all of your precious children will be here for you: Tom, Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, Donny and Jimmy. And, I know, in time, your grandchildren will take care of your sons and me, when our life cycles come to a close.”

I wanted to suspend that feeling of peace into eternity, as I sat there listening to the gentle rattle of my mother breathing in and breathing out.

My third child, my sweet daughter, Rachael. My mother took a twelve-hour flight to be there for her arrival.

O
n a page of my journal from November 2002, there is a simple drawing of one moment in time. A few weeks or months later, this exact drawing could have never been made, because the subject would change so much. The image was drawn using one continuous line and took no artistic talent at all; it was only a matter of tracing around my child’s hand on the paper. Next to the handprint I wrote, “Matthew, age two and a half.” This was one of the few journals that survived the house fire in 2005 that destroyed my home office and most of my personal collectibles, scrapbooks of the children, treasures passed down from my grandmothers and mother, and many of my journals.

I do most of my journal writing late at night, or in the very early morning, depending on your perspective. Not only is there the least possibility of an interruption, but the peace and quiet allows me to hear the soft voice of intuition, or what I call “downloading my spiritual feelings.” Postmidnight is when my mother did most of her writing, as well. In one of her journals from May 1975, when we were performing in Paris, my
mom wrote: “
I’m tired but don’t want to go to bed. I guess I’m a night person. I love the quiet, peaceful time of evening when I know my family is safely tucked in bed. Then I can read, write, file ideas quietly and concentrate.”
I understand her writing this. I smile as I glance over at my clock to see that I am writing this chapter at two o’clock in the morning.

During the day, mothers just have to trust that our kids are out there in the world, every day, and we hope doing okay. But at night, all under one roof, you can have the peace of mind of actually knowing where everyone is, and for a few hours, your mind doesn’t have to wonder if they’re safe. Even now, when my older kids are visiting and go out for an evening together, I have them come tell me when they’re back home for the night. They always laugh at me and say something like “You never know when we’re out the rest of the time,” which is true. But like other moms I know, I find it hard to sleep because you always listen for them to come home.

Over the years, whenever one of my kids was up in the middle of the night because of a bad dream or a tummy ache, I would take their minds off their upset by tracing his hand onto a page of my journal. If I still had all of my journals, I’m sure there would be half a dozen handprint tracings of every child.

It’s hard to believe that this tiny handprint from 2002, which filled only half of a six-inch-by-nine-inch journal page, belongs to my youngest son, now a thirteen-year-old with long, thin fingers and hands that are bigger than my husband’s, strong enough to hurl a football dozens of yards and reach
every key on a full-size saxophone. He is taller than I am even in my heels. The suit I bought for him to wear to church six months ago and had altered to fit him perfectly already needs to be given away, unless capri pants come into style for boys’ suits. The other day, when I picked him up to go to the orthodontist office, I didn’t recognize him waiting in the school parking lot. The cells in his body are dividing and multiplying faster than the interest rate on the credit card I use to buy him new clothes every ninety days. Late at night, coming home from doing a show, when I trip in the dark hallway over the size thirteen sneaker he left at the top of the stairs, I try to remind myself that this tugboat of a shoe with forty-two inches of mud-caked laces represents the tiny foot that kept me awake at three in the morning, internally wedged between my ribs, kicking at the base of my lungs until I gasped for breath. This shoe belongs to the miracle of God’s creation: a child.

A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from a friend’s daughter that contained the 3-D ultrasound image from her twenty-two-week pregnancy, her developing child’s first public portrait. This young woman was able to see the miracle of God’s creation as it was happening. Pregnant women today have the option of viewing their baby from every angle, a definite fast-forward in modern technology, even in the last decade.

In the 1920s, when my grandmothers were pregnant with their babies, they had no choice but to carry on through the nine months in a trusting faith that everything was fine with
the life growing inside of them. Being under a doctor’s care and supervision was financially impossible for either of my grandmothers, as it was for most women of that time. My parents were both born at home with only the help of their own grandmothers and perhaps a midwife.

In 2010, our family was honored by a generous group of donors, who restored the tiny two-room log cabin in Malad, Idaho, in which my mother was born and lived for the first years of her life. It’s now a small museum, displaying items from her young life, including her first sewing machine and the cabinet that my brothers carved their initials into as little boys. I contributed quilts she had sewn over the years and, of course, dolls from her collection.

Today, women who are expecting have access to expert prenatal care developed from decades of research. And on a day-to-day basis most women have Internet access to almost any kind of information about pregnancy that we could possibly need. There are classes taught in making the actual birth process as stress-free as possible and available support for every step of the way. Once your infant arrives, there is every creative baby accessory that any new mother could hope for available at the nearest mall. It’s easy to underestimate the hardships of generations of mothers before us. My mother used to chuckle about all the accessories young moms seem to find it impossible to do without today. When she raised us, she made do with a bassinet, a crib, a high chair, and a blanket on the floor for us to play on. Our baby bathtub was the kitchen sink, our changing table was the dresser top, and our car seats were whatever
adults could hold us tightly on their laps. The only Diaper Genie she knew was a farm pail and some water with bleach that she put the soiled diapers in until she could put them in the washing machine and then hang them on the clothesline outside to dry. My mother thought disposable diapers, when they came along, were the invention of the century (although later she would rethink her position and say that disposable diapers were too much of an expense, a lot of extra waste, and hard on babies’ tender skin!).